THE NIGHT NURSE MARY WAS ARRESTED

This short story has been linked up to the SHORT STORY PROMPT LINK PARTY 11.

Ready? Here’s the prompt:
Just as she thought nothing else could go wrong, the doorbell…  

Now, here’s my version:
THE NIGHT NURSE MARY WAS ARRESTED

Just as she thought nothing else could go wrong, the doorbell made her jump as it woke Mary from her sleep. She had fallen asleep in her recliner after a long day of work. Having been away from home for more than 12 hours, she was so glad to see her house come into view as she turned onto her street.

As a home health nurse, the money was excellent but sometimes it didn’t seem to make up for the many hours on the road.

The patients that she took care of always looked forward to her visits. For some patients who were elderly, she was the only one who ever came to visit. Some of them had no one to grocery shop for them, and although not under her job description, she volunteered to to do their shopping.

The long day began with a home visit to draw blood and collect a urine sample. 

After dropping off the specimens at the lab, Mary continued on to her next patient, a young girl who had cancer.

Next was a daily wound dressing change for a young man who had wrecked on a motorcycle.

Upon arriving to see her fourth patient, she found them unresponsive to her knocking on the front door. Peeking through a window, she saw her middle-aged patient on the floor. Mary quickly called 911. After the ambulance and the police arrived, they discovered the woman inside the house had died.

Leaving that home, she was on her way to the next when her car started sputtering. She realized she was running out of gas. She had never let her car run out of gas.

“Why today?” she asked herself out loud. She was already running late due to not being able to get into her last patient’s home and then waiting on 911 to arrive. Just before the car ran dry she came upon a gas station.

As she pulled into the driveway of her fifth patient’s home, she saw the elderly woman in her wheelchair on the porch. She got out of her car and walked toward the porch to find the woman panting for breath. Mary quickly called 911.

After the ambulance had left with the woman, Mary drove the woman’s husband to a nearby relative’s home as the woman had begged her to do. Unable to breathe, the woman’s only concern had been the welfare of her husband.

The next visit was for a wellness check on a week-old baby. As she sat with the baby’s mother and the several siblings, the baby’s father and another man, both carrying rifles, came inside the house just as Mary was weighing the baby. The men had grimacing looks on their faces. She suddenly felt threatened when she saw the look of fright on the mother’s face and the faces of the children.

Finished with her examination of the baby, Mary drove away feeling relieved to be away from that house. She wondered if she should go back and somehow rescue the mother and children. As Mary thought about that situation, she decided she would make an unexpected visit to the house the next day. She hoped the woman’s husband wouldn’t be home so she could talk to the woman privately.

As the thoughts of the mother and children were going through her mind, she came upon an accident. Two cars had hit head on. She called 911, grabbed her medical bag, and assisted those injured until the ambulance arrived.

Leaving those injured with the ambulance crew, she left the scene of the accident and drove to her next patient’s home.

Hours later she finished with her final visit, drove to a grocery store parking lot and sat in her car typing the reports on her laptop. Mary knew if she went home to do the patient reports that she may not finish as she was so tired.

Having been startled by the doorbell, Mary got up from the recliner and walked toward the door. She turned on the porch light and peeked out of her living room window where she saw two police officers on her porch.

Mary opened the door. One of the officers asked Mary to verify her cell phone number and then told her they were there to arrest her for calling 911 several times that day.

Mary was puzzled and tried to explain that she was a home health nurse and that…but was interrupted by the officer who began reading the Miranda Warning to her as the other officer handcuffed her.

They led Mary to their waiting vehicle. She sat in the backseat, lost in confusion, as the policemen took her to the police station…

*This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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